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Could there be any question?

Honestly, no Christian has ever been able to explain this to me, and I've read a LOT of apologetics. Jesus is God, correct? God is an omnipotent, omniscient and eternal divine being, right?

So God comes to Earth in his aspect of Jesus Christ, knowing what will happen. This divine and eternal being does a lot of good on Earth, then is subjected to physical death for stirring things up too much. God goes back home to continue his rule.

Now, given that God is omnipotent and eternal, it seems that a little crucifixion wouldn't seem like much to him. At worst it was a slightly unpleasant end to a business trip.

So the end question is, where is the sacrifice?

Now, given that God is omnipotent and eternal, it seems that a little crucifixion wouldn't seem like much to him. At worst it was a slightly unpleasant end to a business trip. So the end question is, where is the sacrifice?

Where do I begin. It's a great question but one that astounds me no less.

I don't know how you could describe being crucified as "slightly unpleasant".

It has been called one of the most horrific and painful forms of execution invented.

And this was only the beginning.

He went on to take the punishment for the sins of all mankind, so that He could purchase our redemption...not because He had to, but because He loved us.

This is beyond incredible.

Can you imagine someone you commit an unspeakable crime against, such as murdering his entire family coming to your trial and offering himself to die in the electric chair so you could go free?

What God did through Christ is such a magnificant act of mercy toward us, that come Judgment Day, there will be absolutely no question that God has done everything possible to save us, those who reject salvation have nobody to blame but themselves.

Now, given that God is omnipotent and eternal, it seems that a little crucifixion wouldn't seem like much to him. At worst it was a slightly unpleasant end to a business trip.

You falsely portray the situation. Since God is omnipotent, He can allow whatever He desires to come to pass, even to Himself. The question is not what CAN God do, it is what will God CHOOSE to do.

God comes to Earth in the form of a man. When He does this, He immediately makes Himself subject to whatever a human male suffers. For the first time, God has to eat, drink water, use the bathroom, suffer pain, etc. He doesn't have to, but being omnipotent, He can choose to. And He chooses to as a simple act of compassion.

Now that he is temporarily existing in the form of a human male, God is subject to the extreme agony of crucifixion. This is possibly one of the most painful deaths a human can suffer. It's true that God does indeed go back to heaven and continue His reign, but here's the point: the sacrifice doesn't lie in the fact that He died. The sacrifice lies in the pain He suffered. Essentially, He took on the pain that we humans are required to suffer because of sin. We are required to suffer the pain of existence in Hell. But since crucifixion is such a painful death, and since it quite possibly was as painful as going to Hell, God was suffering the pain of Hell FOR us so that we wouldn't have to. And therein lies the sacrifice.

It's true that God went back to heaven to continue His rule. But He does not forget the sacrifice He made. He chooses to remember it, because He knows he did it out of His love for us. We continue to spit in His eyes and mock and curse Him...but He still remembers out of His love that He endured the pain of Hell for us. It is also worth mentioning that despite being omnipotent, he bears the scars of his death. God, or Jesus, still has scars in His hands where the nails penetrated...and for time and eternity, He will always wear those scars. They will eternally remind Him of the "agony and ecstasy" of creating humanity.

Honestly, no Christian has ever been able to explain this to me, and I've read a LOT of apologetics.

The answer being fairly simple (pardon my long-windednes), I find that hard to believe.

So the end question is, where is the sacrifice?

I think you are using the word "sacrifice" as as a verb meaning a voluntary deprivation as in "I'm sacrificing my vacation to paint my elderly aunt's house".

While that would be an accurate description of what Jesus did, the word "sacrifice" is also used as a noun, as in:

"And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma." Ephesians 5:2

A sacrifice is a substitute. Jesus became a substitute (noun) and offering (noun) for our sins. Explaining the significance of that means getting into heavy duty theology way beyond my ability to capsule in a few words. But I'm just pointing out that to understand Jesus' sacrifice, you have to understand both meanings of the term.

I'm sure you have gotten the response that Jesus' "sacrifice" was "voluntary deprivation" in the extreme (which it was), but I understand why you might not think it was that big a deal given a Divine perspective. But you have to dig into the other meaning of "sacrifice" to understand the full meaning of what Jesus did and became.

Hope that advances the argument for you.

So the end question is, where is the sacrifice?

I've wondered this myself.

With the new TV show, HEROS, where the blond girl gets REALLY messed up physically, yet morphs back together with no lasting damage, it's probably an idea that is wide spread.

When GOD took upon Himself human flesh, He became heir to all the ills that the flesh can experience. Thus, as man, He shed His blood* and died - a 'sacrifice' if you will, in every sense of the word, as we humans know it.

However, as you point out, as GOD, it was a culmination of a long standing plan. *

*NIV Hebrews 9:16-28
16. In the case of a will, it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it,
17. because a will is in force only when somebody has died; it never takes effect while the one who made it is living.
18. This is why even the first covenant was not put into effect without blood.
19. When Moses had proclaimed every commandment of the law to all the people, he took the blood of calves, together with water, scarlet wool and branches of hyssop, and sprinkled the scroll and all the people.
20. He said, "This is the blood of the covenant, which God has commanded you to keep."
21. In the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tabernacle and everything used in its ceremonies.
22. In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
23. It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.
24. For Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God's presence.
25. Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own.
26. Then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.
27. Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment,
28. so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.

* NIV Ephesians 1:4-5
4. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love
5. he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will--

NIV 1 Peter 1:18-20
18. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers,
19. but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.
20. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.

Jesus embodied the very consciousness of God in Human form.

Jesus was God's thumbprint stamped into our matter universe. When Jesus transitioned from life to death, God the father experienced the very consciousness of that death transition, God the father experienced the full physicality of being in a human body..."he was tempted at all points" as the apostle stated.

The full Godhead is forever marked as it were by its experience of being human, but in this process a way was opened up for humans to experience the essence of the Godhead.

So it is more than just "God goes back home to continue his rule." God goes home with his heal "bruised by the serpent, but he goes home with the serpent's head crushed!"

"Now, given that God is omnipotent and eternal, it seems that a little crucifixion wouldn't seem like much to him. At worst it was a slightly unpleasant end to a business trip."

Keep in mind that God, omnipotent, omniscient, infinite, and eternal, became man. Even without thinking of the Crucifixion, the Incarnation, in itself, is a sacrifice beyond all imagining: the Omnipotent becoming weak, the Omniscient learning his first lisping syllables at his mother's knee. Think of the cataclysm of the Infinite and Eternal plunging down to be subjected to the laws of space and time.

This is more shocking than the Cosmos itself disappearing into a Black Hole.

He was the Word of God,
"who, although He had the nature of God,
did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped at,
but emptied Himself,
taking the form of a slave
and, being made in the likeness of men,
He humbled Himself
becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross."

In His human nature Jesus had his own knowledge ("And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men") which He acquired the same way all people acquire knowledge; and He had his own human will ("Father, not my will but Thine be done"). He had his own embodied life, with all that implies: hunger, thirst, exhaustion, pain, etc. He had His own human mind, and experienced sorrow, dread and fear.

The dreadful truth is that He suffered in His dying just as any man would suffer, with all the helplessness, the torment, and even desolation ("My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?") that would afflict any man.

As God, He gave everything He had to give ("emptied himself"), and as Man, He lost everything in a death of total abandonment.

If we had any idea of what this means, we would see that it is the most shocking thing that has ever happened in the history of the Universe.